Landfall

The Stars Like Sand

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry is a well-reviewed 2014 anthology of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry that I co-edited with P. S. Cottier. You can buy The Stars Like Sand from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

Men Briefly Explained

Men Briefly Explained is my 2011 poetry collection that explains men, briefly. You can buy Men Briefly Explained from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

My Library from LibraryThing

About Me

I'm a writer, editor, anthologist, and now blogger who was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 2.
I grew up on the West Coast and in Southland, then went to Dunedin to go to Otago University before moving to Wellington in 1993. I'm married with one child.
I'm juggling the writing of poetry, short fiction and novels, working part time, trying to be a good husband and father, and working hard to get New Zealand to take effective action on climate change - not to mention all the other problems the world faces. Life is busy!

28 November 2017

Big Book Bash

The Big Book Bash is a festival in Carterton this coming Saturday, 2 December, running from 11am-6pm, with a very full and varied programme.

Harvey Molloy and I will be running a workshop at the Carterton Community Courthouse:

1.30 – 2.30pm (Moves to foyer 1.50pm): Poems of Protest and the Environment, with Tim Jones and Harvey Molloy: Two activist poets and creative writing teachers read their poems and then lead a poetry workshop in the foyer. For 12+ years.

From 2018 the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme will be part of Te Auaha, Wellington’s new and visionary New Zealand Institute of Creativity. Writers will be able to work with visual artists, dancers, film makers, photographers, musicians and actors – over the next few years we’ll be developing a ground-breaking collaborative programme.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in pursuing their writing dreams,please be an advocate for our programme and referring them to us or the Whitireia or Te Auaha website www.whitireia.ac.nz or www.teauaha.com

We welcome Tim Jones as our guest poet. His poetry collections include Boat People, All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens and Men Briefly Explained, and his latest, New Sea Land (Makaro Press, 2016). He was the guest poet in Takahe 89 (April 2017). His interest in science fiction is reflected in short story collections and poetry anthologies Voyagers and most recently The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, co-edited with P S Cottier (Interactive Press, 2014). He was the recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010.

15 September 2017

After some careful thought, I've decided to party vote Green this election - and give my electorate vote to my excellent local MP, Labour's Grant Robertson.

In my view, the present National Government has exhibited a disastrous combination of complacency and stupidity, especially on issues such as the environment, climate change, water quality, poverty, transport and housing, and I'm desperate to see the back of them. At this election, for the first time in nine years, it seems they face the real prospect of defeat - now Labour has finally selected a leader that stands for the future rather than the past.

So why am I going to give my party vote to the Green Party, not Labour?

Because, on the issues I care about most, the Labour Party's actual policies still lag well behind Jacinda Ardern's exciting rhetoric. And because Labour's past record in Government has shown that, given the choice, they usually back off from making the big changes that are needed, for fear of offending one constituency or another.

Jacinda Ardern has called climate change 'the "nuclear free moment" of this generation. I agree. In my view, we are now in a climate emergency. But Labour's climate change policy tells a very different story.

In 2009, James Hansen wrote a book titled Storms of My Grandchildren, about the massive storms he expected his grandchildren to have to endure if greenhouse gas emissions weren't sharply reduced. But if he re-released this book in 2017, he'd need to call it "Storms of Us", because - in Edgecumbe, in Mumbai, in Bangladesh, in Houston, in the Caribbean and in Florida - we are now experiencing those storms.

They are already bound to get worse in response to continuing greenhouse gas emissions, but the world still has a chance to prevent them - and sea-level rise, and fires, and sheer heat - become civilisation-ending. But we must act to quickly reduce emissions, act to prepare ourselves for the consequences of climate change, and act now.

And while leadership matters, policy - the things a party says it would actually do in Government - matters too.

Sadly, Labour's climate change policy and its more detailed climate change manifesto come nowhere near matching up to Jacinda Ardern's inspiring rhetoric. Far from a vision of bold action, this is a cautious, incremental, not-stepping-on-any-toes policy, a policy that allows the mining and drilling of the fossil fuels that are cooking the planet - coal, oil and gas - to continue unchecked.

In contrast, the Greens' climate change policy captures the necessary urgency. A Labour-Greens Government is much more likely to take the necessary action on climate and a range of other issues than a Labour Government with Winston in its ear.

Every vote for the Greens helps the election of a Government that will tackle the major challenges facing this nation. And that's why I've decided to party vote Green this election.

I have two readings coming up this month: First, I'm reading with Harvey Molloy at September's Poetry At The Fringe in Wellington - Sunday 17 September, 4-6pm, Fringe Bar, 26-32 Allen St., with Paul Stewart as the guest musician and an open mike to kick things off.

I'll be reading some poems from my latest collection, New Sea Land (about climate change and sea level rise), plus some of my new poems about music and musicians. Come along!

A week later, on the 24th, I'll be the guest poet at Poets to the People - which starts at 4pm at Hightide Cafe, 44 Marine Parade, Paraparaumu. I'm told there's a great open mike at Poets to the People - I hope to see you there! (Poster and further info to follow for this one.)

Dan Davin Literary Foundation – Short Story Conference September 2017The Dan Davin Conference on the New Zealand Short Story – its traditions and departures – will be held 1-3 September 2017.

The
conference is an opportunity to celebrate Southland-born author Dan
Davin as one of the fathers of the modern New Zealand short story, and
the development of the New Zealand short story to today. The short story
has always been of significance in New Zealand literature, and
continues to be an important form of writing.

Some of New
Zealand’s foremost writers of the genre including Owen Marshall, Dame
Fiona Kidman and Tracey Slaughter will attend. Janet Wilson will be
key note speaker. It will be the first conference for many years devoted
entirely to the short story and its place in New Zealand literature.

The programme will begin on Friday 1 September
with the annual Dan Davin Award presentation – this is a local Award in
three categories – junior and senior student and adult. Janet Wilson
will give the key note address focusing on Dan Davin’s war stories while
also touching on Katherine Mansfield and examining the New
Zealand-overseas and international frames for reading and interpreting
short stories with a local origin.Saturday 2 September
will be held in the drawing room of Invercargill’s majestic Civic
Theatre. Throughout the day papers will be presented from a variety of
writers and academics. Dame Fiona Kidman, Owen Marshall and Tracey
Slaughter will present papers as well as participate in a panel
discussion with Janet Wilson. Saturday evening will be a chance to relax
and enjoy some local entertainment and cuisine.Sunday 3 September
will begin with a bus trip to Bluff and the magnificent Te Rau Aroha
Marae where you will be welcomed onto the Marae and into the Wharenui
and treated to the stories of the carvings. This will be followed by
several more papers and finally a delicious lunch featuring Bluff’s
famous seafood.

For those able to stay into the afternoon (which
we highly recommend) the bus will take you to Stirling Point and
Motupōhue (Bluff Hill). And then you will head out to Riverton to visit
Southland’s thriving coastal community.

Extreme Weather Events was my first short story collection. It was published in 2001 by HeadworX, as part of their now-discontinued Pocket Fiction Series. There are twelve stories in Extreme Weather Events:

Maria and the Tree
Wintering OverThe New Land
FlensingThe Kiwi Contingent
My Friend the Volcano
The Pole
The Lizard
Tour Party, Late Afternoon
Black Box
The Man Who Loved Maps
The Temple in the Matrix

To introduce a few, “Wintering Over” is set in Antarctica, where an isolated scientific party has an unusual visitor from the past: Titus Oates, that very gallant colleague of Captain Scott who went for a walk, and proved to be quite some time indeed. “The Pole”, also set in Antarctica, rewrites the struggle to be first to the South Pole. “Black Box” sees strange developments on the Wellington skyline, while “My Friend the Volcano” blows her top in Taranaki.

"Flensing" and "The Lizard" are pretty much the only two horror stories I’ve ever written. "Flensing" is set in South Georgia, which gives it a slight edge, I think. And "The Temple in the Matrix" pokes a few toes into the interstitial pond in a William-Gibson-meets-HP-Lovecraft-uptown kind of way.

The book got some good reviews and I still come across satisfyingly dog-eared copies in public libraries. Now you can buy it from Lulu.com.

19 April 2017

In late 2016, then-poetry editor Joanna Preston of takahē magazine asked me to be a guest poet for a forthcoming issue, and now that issue has been published! I really like the cover:

While I haven't seen the issue yet, I'm expecting the following poems of mine will appear in it:

Messiaen among the Dinosaurs

Composer

The Leningrad Symphonies

The Home of Country Music

Early Summer Music

The Hired Hand

They are all on a common theme (with variations), and as might be apparent from many of the titles, that theme is music. My musical tastes run from Schoenberg to Stormzy, but as I haven't a shred of musical talent, I'm much better suited to writing about music than making it. My first three collections all feature poems about music and musicians, but I took a break from that theme for my latest collection New Sea Land.

Other than a few copies of each that I produce with a flourish* to put on the sales table when I do readings, these books have been long out of print. But I'm pleased to say that, through the tireless work of HeadworX publisher Mark Pirie, these books and a number of other have now been made available as ebooks in epub format, and you can buy them at Lulu.com.

(Epub format won't work on an Amazon Kindle without version conversion, but it will work on most other ebook readers, laptops and tablets.)

Books by the following authors - including hardbacks, paperbacks and ebooks - are currently available:

Alistair Te Ariki CampbellAlistair Te Ariki Campbell and Meg Campbell

Tony Chad

Andrew Fagan

Michael O'Leary

Alistair PatersonMark Pirie

Vivienne PlumbJenny Powell

Helen RickerbyHarry Ricketts

MaryJane Thomson

F W N Wright

That's quite a list, and shows what a great contribution HeadworX has made to publishing New Zealand poetry and fiction.

With all but one of my published books now available in at least one format, this seems like a good time to run through them all, from oldest to newest - so over the next few months I'll put up a series of posts that take you all the way from Boat People (2001) to New Sea Land (2016).